Starbucks

“Our Starbucks Mission Statement [incomplete]: to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.”

CEO Schulz was originally inspired to create the Starbucks Empire by a small number of preexisting Seattle coffee houses whose ambiances he admired. That combined with his experience in Milan Italy, where coffee was of reliably of good quality, and served with savoir faire, inspired him to develop a coffee experience heretofore non-existent in the U.S. market. His vision: to acquire the Starbucks coffee line, and expand its presence until it became, as many European coffee houses are, the “other” place to hang out. People spend most of their time at home or at work, and Schulz anticipated that they could benefit from an additional local in which the coffee flavor would be so sublime and the ambiance reliably pleasant, that customers would flock, not baulk, at the boutique-end prices. Schulz was right. People came in droves to buy their Mocha Coconut Frappuccino Blended Coffees, and Starbucks encountered 20 years of nonstop growth under his lead. Schulz resigned turned the CEO post over to Orin Smith so that Schultz could focus on global strategy.

With Schulz no longer at the helm, operations continued to expand and diversify. The Starbucks experience was no longer uniformly of the type one would describe as an experience. Or at least, not an experience you would attach to a branding statement. Partly in response to customer demand, Starbucks expanded beyond its company owned stores. Hybrid Starbucks experiences cropped up, like the one in my home town in N. California where the top of the line Formica Starbucks counter is shoved up against the heaving bosom of the Target© cash registers standing in formation three paces off to the left. One can smell fresh rotisseried hot dogs and wafting melted nacho cheese while placing an order for a Caramel Macchiato. The Target/Starbucks experience somehow...